


Taking Care

by allihearisradiogaga



Category: Dream Daddy: A Dad Dating Simulator
Genre: Best Friends, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Implied/Referenced Blow Jobs, M/M, Nostalgia, Sloppy Makeouts, dad jokes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-22
Updated: 2017-07-22
Packaged: 2018-12-05 07:59:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11573799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allihearisradiogaga/pseuds/allihearisradiogaga
Summary: Post-run, Craig and Dadsona end up back at Craig's place, all alone.  What follows has been a long time coming.





	Taking Care

**Author's Note:**

> Just for the sake of this fic, Dadsona's called "Jim," because that's the daddest name I could think of (ty to @disappearingoctopus for the suggestion).

Jim wheezed a bit as they pulled in to Craig’s front yard.  The jog wasn’t the hard part–or rather, the jogging part of it wasn’t.  It was the running back and forth once they’d realized River was hungry, and they’d left Craig’s baby bag at the bottom of the hill, meaning they’d had to run back down  _ after _ their hill sprints before re-climbing the hill to continue with the workout.

And, of course, Craig didn’t let that get them out of the murder mile he’d planned already. 

“Th-that…  was…  a…  good…  run…” Jim gasped as he tried to catch his breath, hunkered over his knees on the lawn.

“Bro, I told you, stand up, hands behind the head.  Open up your airways.”  He was breathing slightly harder than normal and had a thin sheen of sweat on him, but otherwise, Craig seemed completely unaffected by the run.  

“Yeah, I’ll… I’ll do that.”  Jim never understood how Craig kept it so together whenever they ran or worked out together.  He always felt like he was  _ literally _ falling apart, but Craig always made it seem like this was easy.  Or, at least, possible to do without dying.  When it came to exercise, Jim figured those two things were analogous.

Craig was at the door, unlocking it as River began to doze in her baby carrier.  “I’ve got to put the little dude down for a nap.  I guess all the running’s got her tuckered out.”

Jim didn’t mention that all of the running had  _ him _ tuckered out, too.

“D’you wanna come inside for a bit?  The girls are at a friend’s house for the day, so it’s a brief moment of quiet around here.”

Jim almost hesitated for a moment, but he nodded and closed the mouth with which he’d been ungracefully gulping air.  He stood up straight again and did a brief jog over to the door to follow Craig inside.

He’d been in Craig’s house before, but it always struck him how  _ different _ it was from the place where he and Craig had lived during college.  There were no terrible band posters on the walls, there were no half-empty beer cans littering the floor, and there were no clothes scattered around every visible surface of the floor, blurring the boundary between clean and dirty (something only truly discernible by the never-failing sniff test).  This place was nice, respectable, and perfect for a single dad and his kids.  Jim followed Craig as far as the kitchen before letting him bring the baby into her room to put her down for a nap.

Jim turned to the fridge to see a few pictures stuck to the fridge with magnets.  There were a lot of pictures of his kids–in fact, that seemed to be the main attraction of this fridge-front.  Briar, Hazel, and River were smiling up from most of the pictures (River was asleep or crying in a few), and Jim couldn’t help but smile.  There really wasn’t much of a difference here from his own fridge, which was adorned by pictures of Amanda and Amanda’s art.  There really wasn’t anything as fridge-worthy as a dad’s daughter, after all.

Next to the pictures of the girls, there was a grocery list pinned with a small magnetic clip.   _ Kale, quinoa, beets, protein… _  It was definitely not Jim’s shopping list, that was for sure, but he also knew that Craig now had more of a cooking prowess than he’d had in college, and he could be trusted to make something good out of those ingredients–even if Jim didn’t even know what half of them  _ were _ .

He was about to go to the living room and see if Craig’s TV could show him any highlights from The Game the night before–Jim had fallen asleep somewhere in the last third of The Game and had missed the final score–when something caught his eye.  He leaned in closer to the refrigerator and plucked the picture out from behind the shopping list.  It wasn’t a picture of the girls, and that was what set it out from the rest.  Jim was actually a little surprised to see it there, because there weren’t really any other indications of their past in college in this house, or at least it seemed.

The picture was of Jim and Craig in their junior year of college.  Craig was smiling a toothy, open-mouthed smile, as if he’d been laughing when the photo was snapped, and he had his arm draped over Jim’s shoulders.  Jim was skinnier then, a scrawny kid who had yet to grow out into his dad body.  Craig, on the other hand, looked mostly the same, despite being somewhat softer around the edges.  Both of them had floppy, shoulder-length hair, something that was much cooler back in the nineties.  Both of them held a cheap beer in their hands, and it seemed like it was the middle of the day, judging by the lighting.  It was a good picture, and Jim found himself smiling at the memories.

“What’re you finding over there?” asked Craig, leaning in the doorway.  Jim looked up hastily, almost as if he was caught looking at something he shouldn’t be looking at.  Craig grinned his warm smile, and he sauntered over to Jim, getting close as he looked over his shoulder at the picture.  Jim couldn’t help but notice that Craig had left his quarter-zip wicking activewear shirt (a prototype for his company’s new clothing line) in the other room, wearing just a sweat-licked tank top that showed off his defined arms a little better than should have been possible.  “Oh, man, the ol’ Kegstand Craig days, huh?”  He laughed aloud, and Jim instantly felt warmer.

“I realize now that we could have just called you ‘Craigstand,’” said Jim, grinning back at Craig.  Craig was very close.  That was okay.  Jim averted his eyes slightly.  “I guess that’s just my dad skills kicking in, though.  Hindsight, unlike my vision, is 20/20.”

Craig guffawed and slapped Jim on the back, the strike hitting him a little harder than he was sure Craig meant it.  He turned to the counter and leaned against it, crossing his arms across his chest.  “That’s where you’re right.”  He raised an eyebrow.  “You thirsty?”

“You know it,” said Jim, and Craig was up again–not a moment of rest for that guy, really–and was moving past Jim to the fridge, where he pulled out a couple of plastic tumblers full of a greenish liquid.  

“Good thing I got these things all ready before we went out this morning.”

Jim grinned and placed the picture back on the fridge, this time in front of the shopping list, before taking the smoothie from Craig.  Before he’d caught back up with Craig, there was no way he would be caught dead drinking this stuff.  But Craig made it, and it tasted sweet–most of what Craig did was sweet, really.

“Bottoms up,” said Craig, and he tilted back his head, guzzling some of the shake.  Jim followed suit, a little slower.  When he lowered the shake, a glob of it slipped between the cup and his lips, landing on his sweaty tee shirt.  He looked to Craig, who had a large splatter on his own chest.  They made eye contact for a moment before both breaking down into laughter.

“I guess we don’t have the chugging skills we had back in the day,” said Jim, placing the cup down on the counter and starting to dab at his shirt with another edge of his shirt.

“I guess not,” said Craig, setting his empty cup down on the counter as well.  He hesitated a moment, and then pulled his shirt off in one swift movement, balling it up in his hand.  Jim had forgotten just how  _ fit _ Craig had become, and he was taken off guard for a moment.

“What’s up?” asked Jim, dropping the corner of his shirt he was only succeeding in making more green.

“We’ve got to wash these now if we want the stain to come out,” said Craig, gesturing to Jim’s shirt with his own balled up shirt.  “C’mon, give me yours, I’ll toss them in on quick wash so the stain doesn’t set.”

Jim raised an eyebrow, doubtful.  Craig was standing in front of him, a veritable Adonis, especially considering that he juggled three rowdy kids, and Jim ate at the mall food court at least once a week.  He waffled for a moment, but he remembered that this wasn’t the first time Craig had seen him without a shirt–they’d lounged in their dorm room shirtless at least a couple times a month when they both ran out of coins for laundry and they didn’t want to get their shirts dirty on 20 cent wing night--and if he made any comments on his dad bod, Jim was ready to fire back a remark about having his as a dad and not as a 20 something.

Jim pulled his sweat-slicked shirt off with much less speed and grace than Craig, and handed it over to him, doing his best not to blush when they made eye contact.  Craig grinned.  “I’ll pop these right in the wash, okay?  Make yourself at home, bro.”

With that, he was gone, disappeared to the laundry room, somewhere down the same hall as River’s room.  Jim turned to the sink and washed the cups out, placing them in the drying rack.  Everything here was so clean, he’d hate to have been the one to have left a mess.

He moved from the kitchen to the living room, sitting down on the couch that looked to be new but that Jim found was well worn-in when he settled in.  He was looking around the coffee table for a remote control, finding only a few fitness magazines and a chapter book about horses, before Craig re-joined him.

“Thanks,” said Jim as Craig sat down on the couch next to him.  He wondered for a moment if the couch really was smaller when the two of them were on it, or if that was just Craig’s proximity.

“No prob, bro,” said Craig, leaning in to give Jim a playful punch on the shoulder.  His hand stayed there for just a moment longer than was probably necessary, but that was okay for Jim.  He pulled out an awkward smile.

“That was a good run today,” said Jim, trying not to let his eyes linger on Craig’s naked chest for too long.  It was so  _ sculpted _ , but he didn’t want to be weird, caught checking out his best friend.

“Yeah, man, the second hill run was a bit much, but we made it through.”  Craig practically  _ beamed _ , and Jim couldn’t help but smiling, too.

“You could say we… ran like  _ hill _ .”

“That… that was bad, bro,” said Craig, holding out a hand for a fist bump anyway.

This was a fist bump that Jim answered just a bit too late, because his eyes had strayed from Craig’s hand to the way his toned stomach sloped into the line of his waistband.  As their fists connected, Craig glanced down at himself and shrugged, blushing slightly.

“You’re checking me out, aren’t you?” he said.

“I mean…” said Jim, turning  _ completely _ red, trying to come up with something,  _ anything _ to say in reply to that.

“It’s fine, man,” said Craig,  He shifted on the couch to face Jim better.  “I don't look the same I did back in college.  I try to take care of myself.”

“Ha, yeah, I guess that’s not really something you did back then…”  Craig was closer to Jim now, and Jim could smell the sweat on his skin.  It was sweet, somehow, and Jim wasn't sure if he was most distracted from their conversation by Craig’s body or his eyes. 

“I take care of myself, my business, my girls, my  _ life _ …”  He trailed off.  “Now I want…  I want to take care of you, bro.”

“I’m sorry, what?”  Jim could feel his heart beating faster.

“I’m sorry, that was cheesy, I–I just…”  Craig broke into a full blush now, too, beginning to shift away from Jim.

Jim grabbed his arm.  “No, I…”  He almost turned away, lost his nerve, but he didn't.  This was hard, but he had raised a teenager.  “I’m good with cheese.  So long as you don’t  _ cut _ the cheese.”

Craig broke down into giggles, leaning into Jim as he did.  “That’s  _ terrible _ .”  His hands landed on Jim’s chest and stomach, but didn’t press down.  His hands were rough, calloused from the weight bars at the gym and from the hours throwing and catching at softball practices.  His touch, however, was soft, tender, and careful never to push hard against Jim’s soft body.  Jim could feel himself grow warmer where Craig’s hands were touching him, among other places…

He looked up to Craig and placed his hands, which he mentally willed to stop shaking so much, on his shoulders, and he could see the color in Craig’s cheeks light up the small wrinkles around his eyes.  Not as many wrinkles as a man his age should have had, that was for sure.

Jim wasn’t sure which of them initiated, but their lips met, and they pulled each other into a kiss, Craig’s body warm and tight against Jim’s.  Craig’s hands went to Jim’s sides, pulling him closer, and Jim was surprised that neither of them had lost any of their skill for kissing, their tongues brushing against each other softly between their lips.

Craig broke off for a moment, and Jim almost let out a small moan of protest.  Craig’s hands held him firm, though–Jim still wasn’t used to the  _ strength _ Craig’s new and improved body brought with it.  Craig left a series of small kisses down Jim’s stubbly neck, causing Jim to arch into his touch, wishing to never be apart from his sweet smell and his strong embrace.

Jim felt a shock go through him, however, when he felt Craig’s hands lower to his waistband, beginning to pull Jim’s shorts down from their place at his waist.  Craig must have felt that chill as Jim’s body stiffened, because he looked up at him, quizzically.  “Are you okay with this, man?”

Jim looked down to Craig, who had slid himself downward to be squatting between Jim’s spread legs, his chest heaving slightly, his cheeks flushed, the corner of his mouth tugging upward.  Jim nodded, his heart fluttering.  In college, Craig had never been like this, never looked to someone else’s desires before his own like this, and the generosity... 

It was more than a little hot.  He nodded, a smile spreading across his face.

“I mean, hey,” said Craig, pulling Jim’s shorts and boxers down to his knees as Jim arched his hips upward to help, “what is there to just a little  _ bro _ -job?”

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is all for that last dad joke AND because I'm upset I can only go on three dates with Craig Cahn. Best dad right there.


End file.
